A blog about rhetoric, technology, research, and where we're headed next.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

VerveEarth

Just got email about VerveEarth, a way to map blogs based on where their authors reside:

Your blog Spinuzzi caught our attention. I'm the CEO of a recently launched startup for bloggers. We are searching the internet for the world's best blogs by geography, and we found yours for Austin. I would like to invite you to our site which plots the content of the internet on an interactive map of the world. VerveEarth is an entirely new way to surf the net. It shows spatial and geographic connections that a blog search engine could never reveal.

The site is www.VerveEarth.com. Once on board, you can easily claim your blog a place in the VerveEarth world. The site is free to use and a way to drive new traffic to your blog. If our vision resonates with you, please give us a mention or add our widget to your blog. Please see our FAQ for any questions, and I welcome your feedback.

It appears to be leveraging Google Maps to map blog locations. A search facility allows you to perform text searches and map the results by location. Interestingly, it also appears to map major universities and newspapers.

I imagine the service would be useful for linking blogs that produce local or regional news. Industry or general commentary blogs (like mine) will tend to reap fewer benefits. On the other hand, I see benefits for people who want to set up local meetups with bloggers. I could also imagine using this tool if I were planning to apply for a job in another area of the country. Finally, I see great potential for targeted ego-surfing.

Hmm, not sure. VerveEarth is less about tracking and more about finding blogs written in close geoproximity. So if you want to find out if other people in your city are blogging about the same topic you are, VerveEarth might be a worthwhile addition.

One example -- we just had primaries and caucuses here in Texas. Some of the caucuses were well conducted, some weren't. VerveEarth would be a good way to collect blogged stories about local caucuses in Texas or in Austin.